The Unveiling

The shroud was a plain, straw-colored cotton fabric taped to the mausoleum’s wall. It concealed the name, newly carved into the granite façade, that my sister and I were to unveil. The material had been carefully placed there earlier that Sunday by attendants at the South Florida cemetery, where most of the deceased are “buried” above the earth to prevent the groundwater’s raising the dead to the surface. The obligatory period had passed since my mother...

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